Airborne-YouTube

Earliest Date For Launch Is Saturday, Weather Is A
Question

NASA has delayed the launch of its Wide-field Infrared
Survey Explorer, better known as WISE, due to a steering engine
problem discovered Wednesday. The launch from Vandenberg Air Force
Base has been re-scheduled for Saturday at the earliest, but there
is only about a 20 percent chance of favorable weather for the
launch.

The Associated Press reports that the original launch date was
set for Friday. The problem was discovered while engineers
completed final launch checks late in the day Wednesday.

WISE is an unmanned satellite carrying an infrared-sensitive
telescope that will image the entire sky. Since objects around room
temperature emit infrared radiation, the WISE telescope and
detectors are kept very cold ... below -430°F /15 Kelvins,
which is only 15° Centigrade above absolute zero ... by a
cryostat, a box like an ice chest but filled with solid hydrogen
instead of ice.

WISE will capture an image of the sky onto an infrared sensitive
digital camera every 11 seconds. Each picture will cover an area of
the sky 3 times larger than the full Moon. After 6 months WISE will
have taken nearly 1,500,000 pictures covering the entire sky. Each
picture will have one megapixel at each of four different
wavelengths that range from 5 to 35 times longer than the longest
waves the human eye can see. Data taken by WISE will be downloaded
by radio transmission 4 times per day to computers on the ground
which will combine the many images taken by WISE into an atlas
covering the entire celestial sphere and a list of all the detected
objects.